Whidbey Examiner

The Whidbey Examiner was wrong to run cartoon | Letters

May 11, 2013 · Updated 2:17 PM Comments

Editor,

I wish to express my outrage at the Arlene’s Flowers political cartoon illustrated by Milt Priggee of Oak Harbor in last week’s Whidbey Examiner. Mr. Priggee depicted Jesus as an evil horned thug. I have noticed that, more and more, it is seemingly becoming acceptable to mock Jesus Christ.

Sadly, it is somewhat expected to come from the main-stream media these days.

Not only is it despicable and insulting when this is done in the larger publications, but when it happens right here in our small-town community and approved by our local newspaper editors and their publisher, well what gives?

As a pre-Vatican Council II Catholic and local business owner with A Touch of Dutch, I find myself angered, ashamed and saddened at the same time. The Whidbey Examiner was wrong and I ask them to make a public apology.

On a separate note, unfortunately the debate battle over homosexual marriage ‘in the here and now’ will never be won by the Christians.

That is not the important thing as in the end the war will be won. The debate Mr. Harry Anderson makes is indicative of something which goes even deeper and more fundamental, which is the fact that we have lost the capacity even to have a coherent and moral conversation about these issues.

To highlight the problem, Justice Elena Kagan, who said in reference to the U.S. Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage deliberations, “Whenever a lawyer makes a moral observation in a case such as this, for me, the red flag of discrimination goes up.” Oh really? As opposed to the Divine and Natural law, it seems more and more unfortunate that human civil laws now want to trump and tie our hands.

Why can’t we have a conversation on moral issues? Why do intelligent people shout “discrimination!” and froth at the suggestion of an objective moral order? Why are so many ready to follow a standard of right and wrong by way of surveys and polls? This path surely seems to lead the herd right over the moral cliff.

Unfortunately, our world today provides a haven for competing opinions on morality where every man’s view is as valid as the next, unless of course one is a Christian.

The voice of Christ that guides all men in the ways of objective truth has been muted thanks to the generations of churchmen of all faiths, especially the modernist popes since 1962, who have shown a lack of courage.

No wonder those of opposing views have been able to run roughshod over any and all who merely wish to live their lives as Jesus asked them to. Where are these voices now? It’s time they speak up.

To be true to God and oneself, one can’t live their life separating Church from state. Before the modernists infiltrated the Catholic Church in 1962, good popes had the courage to speak on this as did Pope Pius XI taught, “When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of ‘real liberty,’ well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony.” Encyclical, Quas Primas.

To sum up, ironically I offer Martin Luther King Jr.’s words on ‘discrimination.’

King: “You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws.

One may well ask ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just and there are unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that ‘An unjust law is no law at all.’ A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.

To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.”

Sadly, many do not acknowledge the existence of an absolute moral authority and this is why we cannot have a coherent moral conversation on this.

The bottom line: By all means we must love our enemies, but let’s not forget that loving as Jesus loved also includes wielding the sword of truth, proclaiming the Gospel with firmness, and condemning error, even when doing so is unpopular and may even invite death itself.